1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to refrigeration apparatus and in particular to means for automatically thawing and dispensing food items normally stored in a freezing compartment of the refrigeration apparatus by transferring the food items seriatim to an above-freezing refrigerator compartment.
2. Description of the Background Art
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,710,978 of Algar H. Cosby, a dispensing cabinet is shown having an article chute from which cans or the like are dispensed from a gravity-fed stack thereof. The lower end of the cabinet defines a dispensing mouth. The cabinet includes a vertical wall at the rear of the stack. A heating unit in the form of a light bulb is provided at the bottom of the cabinet, with the heated air being conducted upwardly between the divider wall and the rear wall of the cabinet so that the containers forwardly of the wall are progressively heated to higher temperature as they pass down the chute defined by the divider wall and the front wall of the cabinet.
Reinhold A. Johnson et al disclose, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,051,772, a machine for dispensing heated sausages from a cold storage compartment. The conveying mechanism includes two superposed rollers which are rotated step by step about vertically spaced horizontal axes in a vertical portion of the chute. Each of the rollers is provided with a peripheral recess to receive one sausage with the top roller sealing the chute and segregating one sausage which it drops into the recess of the bottom roller. The sausage in the bottom roller is then exposed to heating means while the roller is rotated so as to eventually drop the heated sausage into a dispensing chute below the lower roller.
Another form of vertical chute means for dispensing seriatim cans of food items, such as frozen fruit juice, is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,826,471 of Allen B. Fonda. The can holding receptacle is mounted to the door of the refrigerator and defines a lowermost access opening permitting the user to remove the lowermost can of fruit juice from the chute with the remaining cans moving downwardly by gravity to expose the newly lowermost can for subsequent dispensing. The dispensing means is shown as being mounted on the freezer door of the refrigerator apparatus so as to maintain the juice in the cans frozen at all times.